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Young girls learned to sew at an early age, often beginning to work on textiles intended for their own marriage dowries. Suzanis were considered the most important textiles in a dowry. Indicators of skill and family wealth, they were status symbols intended to be used in the home as bed covers, covers for stacked piles of clothing or blankets, or as wall hangings.

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Part of embroideries was made by a bride’s she-relatives, primarily, closest ones; however, participation of far relatives was not denied as well.Their work was not paid; however, there was a strict stocktaking of embroidered items; the family that had been rendered this service was obliged to pay for it by doing the same to the helpers. When it was necessary to hurry up for a wedding, the family of a bride arranged “helping” that gathered the bride’s female relatives, neighbors and girlfriends, who made common efforts to end the work as soon as possible. 

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Gatherings like this were called "chashar" (meaning people getting together to help each other), and were an old and important tradition of the pre-wedding preparations.While embroidering, women frequently· sang and told each other stories. During the breaks the embroiderers entertained themselves playing musical instruments, dancing.It was important that each bride brought to the marriage her own set of embroidered pieces because they reflected her family's wealth and her embroidering skills.The dowry of the daughter of a well-to-do family included about ten embroidered pieces.Later,the collective preparation of a dowry  was out of use and remained in people’s memory as a survival.

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Its role was especially great in the wedding ritual. First, suzani were hanged in a bride’s house where the wedding ritual and the bride’s first rendezvous with the fiancé took place. Then, suzani were hanged in the fiancé’s house where a separate room had been prepared for newlyweds. A bride’s removal and transportation of her dowry occurred late at night, under torchlight. Before the wedding train was ready, embroideries hanged at the house of a bride’s parents were put off the walls and knotted; then they followed the bride’s way. The embroideries were hanged on the walls straight after the bride arrived in the fiancé’s house.The dwelling of newlyweds remains decorated with embroideries for a very long period of time. 

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However, the domestic use of embroideries also had its peculiar, ritual nature related to the survivals of ancient folk beliefs: either embroideries on the whole or their separate patterns, as people understand them, carried the magical character. All these rites related to embroideries pursue one goal: to safeguard a young couple from the magical evil that may deprive them of happiness and children.

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Apart from talisman motives also find motives designated to promote to the receipt of the desirable. The white color of embroideries that played the main role in the wedding ritual was considered a one designating happiness, lucky life; pomegranate and poppy fruits had to provide fertility. The nature ornament-with a number of motives of flowers, greens and fruits included into it-was based upon more distant by similar associations.

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Insignificant, purposefully ignored defects that could be seen in almost every embroidery were explained by the fear of the evil eye: usually, a certain insignificant part of a pattern was not embroidered or embroidery was made with an insignificant technical defect so that viewers neither were too much astonished with its perfection nor too much praised an embroideress’s skill. It was accustomed to leave embroideries a bit incomplete so that families could see no end of holidays (weddings and circumcisions) which the embroideries were prepared for.

 

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